MOVE Logistics Automates Purchase Order Operations

Headquartered in Christchurch, MOVE Logistics is a leading contract warehousing and transport organisation.

Headquartered in Christchurch, New Zealand, MOVE Logistics runs its warehousing and transportation services across most major cities in New Zealand. With business rapidly growing, it was time to upgrade the purchase order system in order to gain better control and transparency of its operations.

Before Laserfiche, the finance team was faced with several logistical issues:

Invoices were often received without a purchase order (PO), quote or other important information.

Paper PO’s with handwritten numbers had to be manually looked up to identify approvers.

Manual approval processes created long wait times, as staff waited for documents to be signed.

Following the receipt of an invoice from a supplier, the finance team was often unsure of what purchase order it was related to and whom to send it to for approval.

The invoice had to be manually uploaded into Xero, MOVE’s accounting software, and data keyed in manually by the finance team.

More importantly, there was no standard way to store and search through PO’s and invoices, and no way to check the status of an order.

“When approximately 2,500 invoices are handled each month, this process can quickly become tedious and inefficient,” says Jess Barrell, Finance Shared Services Manager at MOVE Logistics.

Devising a Solution

“It was an easy decision once we saw how easily the forms can be customised, as well as Laserfiche’s capability to fully integrate with our existing accounting software,” Barrell recalls.

By integrating Laserfiche with MOVE’s existing accounting software Xero, the process for generating purchase orders was greatly simplified. Data from Xero is pulled directly into a Laserfiche form and is used to auto-fill fields, including:

Name of person creating order

Supplier information

Project detail

Department codes

Sales tax calculation

This ensures that the PO is correctly completed, removing confusion and eliminating rework.

MOVE turned to Laserfiche for easy integration with its current accounting system to automate its purchase order system.

Using Laserfiche, the remaining approval steps once a PO is created have all been automated, ensuring that approval happens quickly:

Electronic PO forms are routed to the correct approver, who can either approve or decline them

The requestor automatically receives an email letting them know whether their PO has been approved or declined

Once the PO is approved, the system assigns a unique PO number and converts the form to a PDF

The email includes a link to the PO, which the requestor can give to the supplier

When an invoice is received from the supplier, the PO number is entered and the relevant data is pulled from the PO to the invoice. The original requestor is then notified when the goods have been received.

Once everything is approved, the Laserfiche integration exports information from the invoices and passes it back to the Xero accounting system.

Increasing Visibility and Productivity

According to Barrell, “Life’s great for the finance team! The majority of our invoices are now processed through Laserfiche so the finance team has less manual work.”

Additionally, there is an increase in transparency of the entire purchasing process—users can now see what is in progress, who the paperwork has been handed off to and invoices can easily be resent when necessary.

The greatest benefit for MOVE, however, has been the increase in productivity and the ability to handle a greater volume of work without increasing staff overhead.

Plans for the Future

At MOVE Logistics, their Laserfiche wish list is constantly being added to. This includes future plans to further customise their forms, particularly the ability to select multiple expense codes.

Further implementation could include a scanning project to eliminate the amount of paper records in the office, such as proof of delivery.

For MOVE, any additions would be beneficial because “Ultimately, Laserfiche has been time-saving–not just for the finance department but throughout the company,” says Barrell.